Urban Sprawl in Atlanta,GA

Sunday, November 1, 2009

This article from PBS is actually the dialouge of a news segment that focuses on urban sprawl in Atlanta. The interviewer has sought out local professionals to give their views on what is occuring in Atlanta. One topic that seemed to be popular was the fact that people over the last forty years have started to migrate away from the center pf the city, and now the challenge is to lure them back. People would rather live in the center of the city, but with the price it is pretty much out of the question. But the city hopes their recent efforts are successful, and they have already seen a slow number of people start to come back. This article was a good resource because it went into further depth on how Atlanta is dealing with urban sprawl. It was informative because the people giving their opinions were professionals. Overall it was well written and well presented.

Saturday, October 31, 2009

Brown, Robbie. "Atlanta's Tree Lovers See Victory For Developers in Arborists Firing". The New York Times. 28 Oct 2009. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/06/us/06atlanta.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

This article by The New York Times is about the firing of the senior botanist in Atlanta, a city that has seen itself go from a lush area to one controlled by highways and roads. The Times writes how this firing has left a community up in arms, as they see Tom Coffin as someone who can lead them out of this self destructive path they are heading down. The state of Georgia has let companies come in over the years and extract large amount of trees from the land in exchange for building concrete monstrosities, and unnecessary highways. Environmentalists figure that the Atlanta area loses fifty acres of greenery per day. Atlanta was named the worst city for urban sprawl, and it makes Phoenix look like a rainforest( alright that was a bit of an exaggeration), but they effects have gotten to the point that they may be irreversible. This text was printed recently and is still a popular topic in Georgia, but I found it to be more bias then informative.

This atricle by CNN was posted several years ago, but it is still very relevant. The topic of the article focuses on satellite images that show the effects of urban sprawl in cities acroos the world, although the majority of the atricle is based on Atlanta. CNN says that Atlanta is the fastest growing city in America with population rate increases of up to 33 percent in the last decade. The problem with this is that the way they have dealt with the abundance of people is by building more roads, which has led to their downfall. Looking at the satellite images is like looking at a big slab of concrete. Atlanta is in a downward spiral and some experts don't know if they'll be able to claw their way out. I thought CNN did a great job at visually showing the effects of urban sprawl.

This article by Larry Copeland from USA TODAY describes the transit problems facing Atlanta and it's surrounding areas. Larry Copeland describes the political fight that is currently ongoing in Georgia over how they should deal with the abundance of cars on the roads. Right now Atlanta has the longest average daily commute in the US with the average person driving 35 miles per day, which is one of the reasons they are also the most polluted city in the country. Atlanta has been dubbed "the poster child of sprawl" by the media, and the poor air quality is a direct effect of that sprawl. Not only is the air quality effecting the health of the planet, it effects the health of the residents. On a particular smoggy day the local hospitals are usually lined up out the door with people suffering from asthsa like symptoms. This article was insightful and contained good information to help with my research.

This article describes the problems that Atlanta is having with their water resources. The reason that they are having these problems is a direct outcome of urban sprawl. Atlanta's main resource of water, Lake Lanier, only has 2-3 months of water left. Now the people of Atlanta are playing the blame game. The citizens blame the state, who are blaming the army corp., who blame The Endangered Species Act, who in return is blaming the lack of hurricanes in the region. It was a great example of problems that cities around the world could be facing in the near future if we continue to build extravagant cities instead of practical cities.Although this article was short it was very insightful to the problems Atlanta is facing, and it gave me a sense of what it is like living in an area controlled by urbam sprawl.

Thursday, October 29, 2009

This website looks at the issues and events in Atlanta,GA. This particular article focuses on Urban Sprawl. It highlights urban sprawls effect on air quality, water quality, and the rate that Atlanta is growing. Like Phoenix, Atlanta has little to no barriers to limit its outward growth, and this article does a great job at listing and explaining all of them. This article also list some ways that environmentalists are trying to deal with these solutions, and put Atlanta back on the right track. I found this article to be well written with excellent combination of information and statistics, and it was very helpful in my research.